Crimea River

What can one possibly say in the face of this latest war that isn't impossibly trite or obvious? 'A plague on all your houses' is tempting, as is the old joke 'I wouldn't have started from here', because yesterday's attack on Ukraine is the result of miscalculation and cowardice on all sides for decades. 

There's a lot of chatter on the usual social media sites about useful idiots and infantile leftists, largely thanks to the Stop The War Coalition's preference for critiquing NATO rather than Russia, and the right's predilection for wilfully dumbing-down any criticism of Western governments and shouting treason. Some people are claiming that the attack on Ukraine is proof that Putin wants to re-establish the Soviet Union, which I think (channelling Zhou Enlai's apocryphal view of the French Revolution) is a misreading caused by a limited historical perspective. Instead, being a non-Stalinist old left-winger, I see the USSR as Tsarist Russia in modernised garb. The faces at the top changed, a few non-Russians were integrated into the leadership, but it was essentially the Russian-dominated empire under new management. While Putin is happy to appeal to the understandable ostalgie of citizens who remember not starving under the communists by downplaying the worst crimes of the Soviet regime, he's pretty consistently invoked the worldview of the Czars in all its autocratic pomp, particularly when it comes to how they viewed the near abroad (i.e. theirs). Putin isn't the General Secretary de nos jours; he's the Czar. 

While I'm embarrassed by the crudeness of the Stop the War & Cos. position, I do feel that the war, and Putin, are the creation and fault of the supposed democratic states. We've had 30-odd years of claiming that the West and democracy (not the same thing) won the cold war, but it's howlingly obvious to me at least that wasn't democracy that triumphed, it was capitalism. Other than the special case of Germany, the West made no effort to instil democracy in the former USSR. It imposed the most brutal forms of capitalism and made a tacit deal with the gangsters who emerged that the needs of their populations would come a very distant second to the energy and financial needs of the markets. The Chechens, the Georgians and a host of other democratically-inclined nations were abandoned; Russian people were left to destitution, drink and nostalgic fantasies, but oil and looted cash flowed out of Russia and into London, Frankfurt, Cyprus, the Virgin Islands, Switzerland and every other shady haven, no questions asked. No effort was made to establish states run by and for their populations. Every hungry oligarch and dictator was feted and fed to ensure that they didn't impede the flow of loot into Western banks, political parties, law firms, private schools and football clubs until one of them had the bad manners to get impatient. Doesn't Putin understand that economic violence is much more effective than the stuff with guns? Why invade a country when you can buy it piece by piece? It's embarrassing. Makes the global order look bad.  

No wonder the West's response is so compromised, embarrassing and evasive. The virtue signalling from all sides is unbearable. Here's what Steve Reed, the Labour MP posted on Twitter:

This, kids, is what we call bathos. The Kremlin's tacticians aren't recreating that scene in Downfall as news that Croydon stands with Ukraine filters through. Does Croydon really stand with Ukraine? What does that mean in practice? Still, at least Steve is just a backbench opposition MP who needs to sound tough. What of the actual British Prime Minister? Well, I took some time off work to watch his solemn address to the nation and came away pretty depressed. 7 minutes of utter vacuity no more meaningful than Steve's tweet. Nothing more than 'thoughts and prayers' - tough words without a single meaningful action attached. Cynical, in fact: rhetoric designed to persuade the voters that the UK government is actually doing something while very carefully not committing to doing anything at all. Johnson keeps saying that the UK will act in concert with other nations - perhaps being in some kind of supra-national union might have helped? What he actually means is that there's no way the other big nations will do anything so Britain won't have to either. It's not a promise, it's a loophole. Brexit has been a bonanza for the oligarchs and criminals the world over: Britain has become Europe's Macao, a lovely place with all the trappings of civilisation but without any of that pesky rule-of-law stuff, a safe haven for looted billions with no questions ever asked, thanks to state capture by a crowd of politicians who are far more interested in finance than democracy and rather envy the crude macho bluster of Trump, Putin and co. and are quite bored having to operate within the minimal guide rails of liberal democracy. 

The reason is obvious: Ukraine has no chance of winning this war without military help from outside and no country is going to provide it. I would have a lot more respect for the UK government if they honestly explained that Ukraine isn't important enough to go to war with Russia over - it's the double-talk that I can't stand. There's no meaningful action that the West can take that will change the course of events other than war, and that's not going to happen. Admitting this isn't an option so instead you get Johnson and his crew of compromised statesman cos-players throwing Churchillian shapes while wondering how this will affect the upcoming local election results. Ukrainians and Russian conscripts will die while we ponder confiscating the odd under-achieving football club and a couple of yachts (BP's Russian holdings will remain untouched) and our leaders will hope for a swift Russian victory they can present as an unfortunate fait accompli. The Ukrainians can appeal to us via heart-rending social media - the new asymmetric warfare - but they're collateral damage that the powerful countries can easily live with. 

The last British adventure in Ukraine resulted in the Charge of the Light Brigade (spoiler: massive away loss, a mediocre poem and an iffy Doctor Who episode); Johnson, Truss, Tugendhat and the rest of this ghastly crew is more the Charge of the Shite Brigade. Lightweight, tactical, cynical and pointless. Being a product of empire myself I've never put the slightest faith in the much vaunted idea of Britain being a credible force for good in the world (where might Putin have got the idea for 'protecting' an embattled minority against anti-imperialist splitters, in the centenary year of the foundation of Northern Ireland?), but the obvious post-Brexit marginalisation of the UK would be funny if it wasn't so tragic. 

Anyway, enough of My Two Cents. While all this has been going on I've read some books, between to a funeral, bought more books, done a lot of marking, watched this government legislate to abolish universities like mine and fumed that not enough of my colleagues voted to strike alongside our counterparts in 68 other universities, and went to an online dramatisation of the life of novelist Amy Dillwyn, the Welsh Ann Lister.